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Liberals would campaign on NDP-inspired budget if government defeated

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals will campaign on an NDP-inspired budget if New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath opts to defeat the government and spark a June election.

From left to right, Music Canada president Graham Henderson; Finance Minister Charles Souza; Metalworks Group CEO Gil Moore, and Tourism, Culture and Sport Minister Michael Chan take the stage Wednesday at Lee's Palace in Toronto, where the Liberals unveiled a new three-year, fund to help the music industry. (Bernard Weil / Toronto Star)

By Robert Benzie and Richard J. BrennanQueen's Park Bureau

Wed., May 1, 2013

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals will campaign on an NDP-inspired budget if New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath opts to defeat the government and spark a June election.

The spending plan to be introduced by Finance Minister Charles Sousa in the legislature at 4 p.m. Thursday addresses all seven of Horwath’s stated demands for support.

These include a 15-per-cent cut to auto insurance rates, $295 million to create jobs for youth, $260 million to improve home-care health services, and a pledge to force Ottawa to curb some of the benefits big corporations get from the harmonized sales tax.

However, a snap election could still be triggered.

That’s because Horwath must weigh having her budget conditions met with the political damage suffered by the Liberals over their $585-million gas plant fiasco.

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“If we are not feeling that that budget meets the needs of Ontarians, doesn’t deliver the results they deserve, is unbalanced or inappropriately burdens Ontarians, we won’t be supporting the budget,” the NDP leader said.

Sousa emphasized Wednesday that the Liberals would be happy to take his NDP-influenced spending plan to voters if Horwath sides with Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and topples the government.

“I would say that this is a platform for the people of Ontario,” the treasurer said.

“The NDP have made some requests. We’ve met all those requests and much more,” Sousa said at a pre-budget news conference at a packed Lee’s Palace in the Annex, where he unveiled a new three-year, $45-million fund$45-million fund to help the music industry.

Hudak said Wynne, who succeeded Dalton McGuinty as premier in February, has “lost the moral authority” to govern Ontario and nothing in the budget can change that.

“A PC government would downsize size and the cost of the public sector and grow the economy to create jobs. That would be a big difference between a budget we’d produce and the one tomorrow,” the Tory leader said, lambasting the NDP for propping up the Liberals.

One largely symbolic line in Sousa’s budget could give Horwath the excuse she needs to pull the plug on the Grits.

The finance minister said he will be broaching the idea of optional toll lanes — with no dollar figure attached or any timetable proposed, because he doesn’t want to preclude Metrolinx’s forthcoming recommendations — as a way to get the conversation rolling on ways to fund public transit.

“We’re not going to increase taxes. We’re not raising road tolls. We’re giving people a choice to have HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes. It’s a consideration that’s been put forward,” said Sousa, suggesting some high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for car-poolers could be switched into toll lanes to pay for transit infrastructure.

Howarth said she is opposed to new tolls or taxes to bankroll transit.

“Everyday people . . . are already feeling overburdened in terms of their financial burden. And I just don’t think now is time to add more of a financial burden to them,” she said.

But Horwath is mindful she could be blamed for causing a $92-million election some 20 months after the last provincial campaign and would somehow need to justify defeating a budget containing many NDP policies.

“We are going to take our time to look through that budget very carefully and to hear from Ontarians in terms of whether or not it meets their needs,” she said.

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